Antonis Tzilivakis Glad you liked it! How cool that someone from Greece has heard it! Sometimes people think it's in some way anti Greek but of course it isn't - - it could have been in any country, and the shoes were great value, I probably should have paid the full price in the first place! So I'm glad you liked it and found it useful
Hi Chris, Thanks for teaching us from your successes and things that did not go as expected. Most people do not talk about things that did not work out as planned, but as you demonstrate there are perhaps more lessons learnt from those situations.
yes that's right, no chance of getting them reduced once I come back - but still better than not buying them - they were worth £5 to me. So the moral is a) always worth a try, but b) it's OK to crumble and go back if the first part doesn't work out. It won't always, so you should be prepared to do that. Without pride!
HI Chris, really like listening to your up beat outlook of project management successes and pitfalls. As a major part of project management involves managing contractors, how about looking at what works well/badly when dealing with them. Too bad I am no longer in the uk as I would love to have the chance to attend one of your seminars.
hmm, managing contractors, I'll have a think about that. I suspect the same principles apply as they do to all negotiating, but there might be some things that are different....
Do you negotiate anything other than money? E.g., I do private tutoring, and sometimes you can see the client is sincerely paying every penny they can scratch and then some more. In those cases if I'm not especially pleased with the pay I sometimes want to negotiate other benefits, especially them referring other potential clients, better scheduling, more stability in the work, etc.
FortNikitaBullion Absolutely yes! Tradables other than money can be worth a lot, they can make much more difference to a deal than the money. They also allow win-win rather than win lose because money always has the same value to both people whereas a tradable can be very valuable to you and easy for the other person to give you. So yes I strongly recommend making a list of tradables before you start the negotiation. The work involved it’s worth putting in because you have that list then for every future negotiation as well. So for example if somebody books for me for several days of training in advance, or recommends me to someone else, that is great for me and easy for them to give
Cool. One thing I find very irritating about private tutoring is that you never know when a deal is going to end. Problem is, I don't quite have the reputation to charge someone several months or even just a week in advance. Any wisdom there? E.g., it's especially problematic that I can't book a trip because I don't know if that's my best season for getting clients. So I wait to the last minute and get gouged on airline tickets and hotels. So having a schedule 1-2 months in advance is very valuable to me.
I agree, ideally yes I would have had an alternative, I would have been much stronger. But they were the best ones - the alternatives did exist but weren't very good. And I think often if life we don't have an alternative but we can still give negotiating a go, as long as the other person doesn't discover that we HAVE to but from them....
